Booker prize: Silicon Valley billionaire takes over as new sponsor

Charitable foundation Crankstart, run by married philanthropists Michael Moritz and Harriet Heyman, will fund the award for five years

Silicon Valley billionaire, philanthropist and author Michael Moritz and his wife Harriet Heyman’s charitable foundation has been announced as the new sponsor of the Booker prize, a month after the Man Group revealed it was ending its 18-year sponsorship of the prestigious award for literary fiction.

Moritz and Heyman’s foundation, Crankstart, has committed to an initial five-year exclusive funding term for the Booker, with an option to renew for a further five years. It will not give its name to the award, which will revert to its old name of the Booker prize from 1 June, when the Man Group’s sponsorship ends.

Related: Can the arts afford to be too fussy about how sponsors make their money?

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Raymond Briggs's final book, which faces death 'head-on', due this year

Collection of short pieces, which has been in the works for more than a decade, takes stock of The Snowman author’s life

Raymond Briggs is one of the UK’s most beloved children’s authors, the creator of characters from The Snowman to Fungus the Bogeyman. But in his forthcoming book Time for Lights Out, a “head-on” confrontation with old age and death, he describes himself as nothing more than a “long-haired, artsy-fartsy type” who “did pictures for kiddy books / Or some such tripe”.

The collection of short pieces, which has been in the works for more than a decade, will be published in November by Jonathan Cape, it was announced on Wednesday. Illustrated with Briggs’s pencil drawings, Time for Lights Out starts from the 85-year-old’s school days and his time as an evacuee during the second world war, touching on his memories of his parents and his childhood home.

Related: Raymond Briggs: ‘There could be another world war. Terrifying, isn’t it?’

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Authors voice alarm after sharp drop in sales of YA fiction

Figures last year were the lowest for 11 years, with an overcrowded market and focus on ‘worthy’ books among the factors blamed

A major slump in sales of young adult (YA) fiction in the UK has been greeted with alarm by authors, who are leaving the category in droves because of poor returns, and by experts who have warned that failing to make books easily available to young people could severely affect literacy levels.

Figures from the Bookseller magazine show YA sales fell by £6.2m to £22.5m last year, the lowest point in 11 years, with volume down by 26.1% to 3.3m books sold. The decline follows a series of boom years earlier this decade, fuelled by film adaptations of bestsellers including Suzanne Collins’s dystopian Hunger Games trilogy, John Green’s love story The Fault in Our Stars and Veronica Roth’s Divergent series.

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New Philip Pullman novel The Secret Commonwealth due in October

The second volume of his Book of Dust trilogy finds Lyra now a student, facing adult problems as she travels across Europe and into Asia

Seven years after readers last saw Lyra Silvertongue, sitting on a bench in Oxford’s Botanic Garden, Philip Pullman’s most beloved heroine is set to return as an adult this autumn in the second volume of his trilogy The Book of Dust.

Pullman announced on Wednesday that The Secret Commonwealth would be published in October, just ahead of BBC One’s TV adaptation of his bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy, starring Dafne Keen as the child Lyra, Ruth Wilson as the sinister Mrs Coulter and James McAvoy as Lord Asriel.

Related: The limits of reason: Philip Pullman on why we believe in magic

‘It used to be you who was impulsive,’ said Pan, ‘and me who kept holding you back. We’re different now.’

She nodded. ‘Well, you know, things change … This isn’t just shoplifting. This is murder.’

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'We donte want to hurt anney one': Bonnie and Clyde's poetry revealed

Family notebook appears to show that both of the notorious Depression-era outlaws turned their hand to verse

An old green notebook believed to contain poetry written by the notorious outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow has been put up for auction by Barrow’s nephew.

The pair, who went on a 21-month crime spree robbing banks, gas stations and restaurants at the height of the US’s Great Depression, were shot and killed in a police ambush in Louisiana in 1934. Barrow was 24, and Parker, who had teamed up with Barrow on his release from prison years earlier, was 23. The pair became even more famous when they were played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in the 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde.

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Regina King wins Oscar for best supporting actress for If Beale Street Could Talk

Actor receives accolade for her role as a mother in Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk

Regina King has won the best supporting actress Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards for her role in If Beale Street Could Talk.

It was King’s first Oscar nomination, and she triumphed in a field containing Amy Adams, who played Dick Cheney’s wife Lynne in Vice, and Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone who played Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham, respectively, in The Favourite. King was the strong favourite for the award, having taken the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. However, she lost the Bafta to Weisz, and was surprisingly not even nominated for the Screen Actors Guild award.

Related: Beale Street's Regina King: 'Awards season is like a new full-time job!'

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Donald Keene, renowned scholar of Japanese literature, dies aged 96

US-born academic became a Japanese citizen and received country’s highest cultural honour in 2008

Donald Keene, a renowned scholar of Japanese literature whose writing and translations inspired generations of students with an interest in Japan, has died aged 96.

The New York-born Keene, recipient of the country’s highest cultural award, died of heart failure at a hospital in Tokyo early on Sunday, reports said.

Related: Top 10 books about Japan

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Ennio Morricone settles old scores with ‘simplistic’ directors

Eminent Hollywood composer, 90, hits out at film-makers’ poor understanding of music

As one of cinema’s greatest composers, he has written the music for hundreds of films, including classics such as A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, recreating the wild west of Sergio Leone’s imagination with a soundscape of haunting whistles and cracking whips.

But, after a lifetime’s career in both Hollywood and European cinema, Ennio Morricone is now settling scores of a different kind. In a book based on extensive interviews with the famously private man, he attacks film-makers who, he says, fail to understand the power of music to heighten emotions – and some fellow composers for enabling them to regard a soundtrack as merely “something that plays in the background”.

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The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders review – another world

The dark side of the planet January holds a surprising lesson in compassion for an outcast

Charlie Jane Anders’s Nebula award-winning debut All The Birds in the Sky (2016) was a quirky if ramshackle combination of futuristic science and magic that held together largely through the charm of Anders’s voice. Her follow-up is a more carefully structured work: classic SF in the mode of Ursula K Le Guin or Octavia Butler. The planet January is tidally locked to its star, one side scorched by constant sunlight and the other a frozen wilderness of endless night, with human settlement confined to the narrow twilight zone between the two. Life is hard, sustained by ancient technologies that are starting to fail, the darkness behind the cities populated by terrifying monsters.

The story begins when student Sophie takes the fall for a theft by her roommate, the more confident and beautiful Bianca. Punishment is extreme: Sophie is thrown to the night-side to die. She survives by connecting with the alien “crocodiles”, telepathic creatures whose compassionate intelligence belies their giant pincers and tentacled hideousness.

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Shatterhand: new James Bond film's working title announced

The much delayed 25th official James Bond film is due to begin filming in April, with a working title taken from an alias of the series’ villain Ernst Blofeld

The next James Bond film is to shoot under the working title Shatterhand.

Industry publication Production Weekly has included a listing in its 21 February newsletter for “Bond 25 w/t Shatterhand”, with shooting due to start at Pinewood studios on 6 April.

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Winchester Cathedral scraps Jane Austen statue plan after protests

Proposals for a £250,000 memorial to add to her gravestone and the nearby museum prompt fierce local opposition

Plans to erect a statue of Jane Austen in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral have been shelved after residents baulked at the idea of another memorial to the novelist in the city.

The cathedral had commissioned the sculptor Martin Jennings to create a statue of Austen for its inner close, planning for it to “seal her place in the rich and complex identity of Winchester and create a lasting memorial to her literary genius” and setting out to raise £250,000 to make the proposals a reality. The project was supported by Hampshire county council and Winchester city council.

Related: Winchester in the spotlight: the city where Jane Austen died 200 years ago

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Crime writer Don Winslow challenges Trump to border wall debate

Stephen King seconds call for Fox News head-to-head, offering $10,000 to make it happen

Crime novelist Don Winslow has issued a challenge to Donald Trump to debate his plans for a border wall on Fox News – a provocation that horror author Stephen King has offered to fund.

Winslow, whose latest book is called The Border, the third novel in his Cartel trilogy, made the offer on Twitter: “Dear @realDonaldTrump. Let’s debate the Trump wall and let the people decide. I’ll even do it on your own network – @FoxNews. Any show. Any anchor. Any time. You debated 18 Republicans during your presidential campaign, I am sure you can handle one writer. Let me know.”

Related: The prince of punching up: why Stephen King rules Twitter

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Romance novelist Cristiane Serruya accused of plagiarism

Brazilian author blames ghostwriter after fellow novelists, including bestseller Courtney Milan, flag passages they claim were lifted from their work verbatim

Bestselling Brazilian romance novelist Cristiane Serruya has pulled one of her novels from sale after she was accused of plagiarising some of the biggest authors in the genre.

American author Courtney Milan, whose books are regulars on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller charts, said she was first alerted to the alleged plagiarism by a reader. A law professor turned historical romance author, Milan alleges that Serruya’s novel Royal Love “copied, word-for-word, multiple passages from my book The Duchess War”, laying out a range of instances on her blog.

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Hockney book paints portrait of the artist through brother's eyes

The Hockneys: Never Worry What the Neighbours Think offers an intimate look at the painter David by his brother John

A new book on David Hockney is set to offer readers the chance to view the artist from a fresh perspective – that of his younger brother.

The Hockneys: Never Worry What the Neighbours Think is written by John Hockney, the youngest of four siblings, and promises to examine the close and complex relationships between the family members, as well revealing more about the life of one of Britain’s best-loved artists. According to a brief statement by David: “John has a view of me no one else has.”

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DC cancels comic where Jesus learns from superhero after outcry

The Second Coming series, which had been due to launch next month, has been pulled following campaign by conservative site CitizenGo

A new comics series in which Jesus Christ is sent on “a most holy mission by God” to learn “what it takes to be the true messiah of mankind” from a superhero called Sun-Man, has been cancelled by DC Comics. The move follows a petition that called it “outrageous and blasphemous”.

The Second Coming series, from DC imprint Vertigo, was due to launch on 6 March. Written by Mark Russell and illustrated by Richard Pace, its story followed Jesus’s return to Earth. “Shocked to discover what has become of his gospel,” he teams up with a superhero, Sun-Man, who is more widely worshipped than him.

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Australian author sees similar plot to his in trailer for new Danny Boyle film

The upcoming movie Yesterday bears resemblance to Nick Milligan’s novel Enormity

When Nick Milligan decided to self-publish his speculative fiction novel, Enormity, he knew it was going to be a hard slog to find an audience. But seeing a similar plot play out in the trailer for Danny Boyle’s new film, Yesterday, came as a shock.

“I had high expectations for Enormity’s success,” Milligan said. “I wrote it with a movie in mind.”

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Carnegie medal longlist highlights trend for gritty children's books

Twenty books in contention for this year’s £5,000 award encompass stories of bereavement, isolation and marginalisation

From a girl’s exploration of her Taiwanese heritage following her mother’s suicide to the story of two young carers whose mother is terminally ill, the 2019 longlist for the Carnegie medal rides a wave of children’s books about marginalisation and isolation, poverty and bereavement.

First won by Arthur Ransome for one of his Swallows and Amazons adventure novels in 1936, the UK’s most prestigious award for children’s books this year encompasses a range topics including depression, assisted dying and gun violence. Novels in the running include The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily XR Pan and Brian Conaghan’s The Weight of a Thousand Feathers, which both deal with the death of a mother; Onjali Q Raúf’s The Boy at the Back of the Class, about a Syrian refugee living in the UK; Emily Thomas’s Mud, about a girl living on a Thames sailing barge with an alcoholic father; and Candy Gourlay’s Bone Talk, which follows a Filipino boy whose tribe is at risk from a US invasion in 1899.

Related: Jason Reynolds and JD Salinger's posthumous return – books podcast

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Popular book on marijuana's apparent dangers is pure alarmism, experts say

Doctors and scientists criticize ‘flawed pop science’ of Tell Your Children – but author Alex Berenson stands by his claims

A group of 75 scholars and medical professionals have criticised a controversial new book about the purported dangers of marijuana, calling it an example of “alarmism” designed to stir up public fear “based on a deeply inaccurate misreading of science”.

Related: Why smoking weed can get you fired in Massachusetts – even though it's legal

The reaction from people in the advocacy and science community, I’m surprised by their intellectual dishonesty,

Related: Does marijuana use really cause psychotic disorders? | Carl L Hart and Charles Ksir

Related: How a failed Super Bowl ad signals the future of cannabis advertising

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Women’s battles become page-turners as #MeToo inspires novelists

Rape, persecution and gaslighting are in the spotlight as writers tap into a mood of post-Weinstein honesty

Female writers have responded to the #MeToo movement by taking difficult themes such as rape and gaslighting and exploring them in some of this year’s most anticipated novels.

From books such as Harriet Tyce’s crime debut Blood Orange to witty commercial fiction such as Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie, female writers are increasingly tackling subjects that were once considered taboo.

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Did Henry VI have a sex coach in his marriage bed?

The medieval monarch and his queen, Margaret of Anjou, were not alone at night, historian Lauren Johnson reveals

For more than eight years, Henry VI and his queen struggled to produce an heir. Now it has emerged that the couple were not alone in their endeavours in the royal bedchamber.

The historian Lauren Johnson has unearthed evidence showing that when Margaret of Anjou visited her husband’s bedroom for marital relations, they were sometimes joined by trusted courtiers.

Related: A sheep in wolf’s clothing? The other side of Henry VIII

Complaints about royal sterility undermined Henry’s masculinity and even his authority.

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'I know what it feels like to be hunted': Brigitte Bardot on life in the spotlight

Actor reflects on her despair at human nature and how animals have brought her peace

She was the ultimate screen goddess, who gave it all up, dedicating herself to protecting animals for the past 46 years. Now, in a forthcoming memoir, Brigitte Bardot laments the destructive nature of celebrity, saying it suffocated her and robbed her of the ability to go anywhere without being approached by strangers, some of whom wanted to embrace and touch her.

“I know what it feels like to be hunted,” she says.

Related: Frozen in Time: Brigitte Bardot on set in Mexico, February 1965

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Andrea Levy, chronicler of the Windrush generation, dies aged 62

Award-winning author of Small Island and The Long Song had cancer

• Gary Younge: ‘After a life of striving, Andrea Levy got the acclaim she deserved’

The writer Andrea Levy, who explored the experience of Jamaican British people in a series of novels over 20 years has died, aged 62, from cancer.

After starting to write as a hobby in her early 30s, Levy published three novels in the 1990s that brought her positive reviews and steady sales. But her fourth novel, Small Island, launched her into the literary big league, winning the 2004 Orange prize, the Whitbread book of the year and the Commonwealth Writers’ prize, selling more than 1m copies around the world and inspiring a 2009 BBC TV adaptation.

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The Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolaño review – a hymn to Mexico City

It may not have been intended for publication, but the novel’s exuberant spirit offers an insight into Bolaño’s later work

Motorcycles are the vehicles of choice in The Spirit of Science Fiction; one in particular, a stolen brown Benelli called Aztec Princess, carves its erratic path through the pages of the novel, stalling and starting, testing its engine as it changes speed and direction. Midway through the book, the narrative itself begins to feel like a motorbike being revved, a loud growl that every now and then accelerates into glee and abandon before slipping back into a more tentative mode.

The Chilean author Roberto Bolaño is best known for his effervescent novel The Savage Detectives, first published in English in 2007, four years after his death, and the epic 2666. The latest genie to emerge from his seemingly inexhaustible archive, The Spirit of Science Fiction, was not intended for publication; written in 1984, it was only published in Spanish in 2016 and, like much of his work, is masterfully translated by Natasha Wimmer. More than anything, it reads as an ur-text of The Savage Detectives, and is populated with precursory character sketches and situations. Bolaño had written mostly poetry beforehand; this book offers a view into the author’s mental workshop as he figures things out, his sights now trained on the romance and possibility of the longer stretch.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2TNG3gw

James K Baxter: venerated poet's letters about marital rape rock New Zealand

Collection of writings just released includes references to rape of then-wife Jackie Sturm, herself an acclaimed poet and author

A new collection of letters from one of New Zealand’s most significant poets, James K Baxter, that includes a blunt admission of marital rape is causing shockwaves through the literary community.

Baxter died in Auckland in 1972 but remains one of New Zealand’s literary giants. He achieved international attention in the late 1950s after Oxford University Press published his poetry collection, In Fires Of No Return.

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Historians warn against soundbite verdicts on Winston Churchill

Following consternation over shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s judgment, experts have appealed for less simplistic appraisal

The political fallout over John McDonnell’s characterisation of Winston Churchill as a villain continued on Thursday, with Boris Johnson suggesting that the shadow chancellor “should be utterly ashamed of his remarks”. But historians have poured scorn on the idea that Churchill’s legacy can be reduced to one word, arguing that history “should never be reduced to soundbites”.

The row began after McDonnell was asked at an event organised by Politico to answer in one word whether Britain’s wartime prime minister was a hero or a villain. The shadow chancellor replied: “Villain – Tonypandy.” This was a reference to an incident in the south Wales town in 1910, when riots erupted after police attempted to break the miners’ picket line. The then home secretary Churchill sent 200 officers of the Metropolitan police and a detachment of Lancashire Fusiliers to stop the riots. One miner was killed and almost 600 people were injured.

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Billy Bragg writes first in series of political pamphlets by musicians

The Three Dimensions of Freedom, a polemic about accountability by the singer-songwriter, will launch line of similar works from Faber

Singer-songwriter and leftwing activist Billy Bragg is spearheading the launch of a new line of political pamphlets in the tradition of Thomas Paine, taking on the crisis of accountability in western democracies.

Running to 15,000 words, Bragg’s polemic, The Three Dimensions of Freedom, will be published in May and will tackle the battleground that free speech has become. Bragg argues, said publisher Faber & Faber, “that to protect ourselves from encroaching tyranny, we must look beyond this one-dimensional notion of what it means to be free and, by reconnecting liberty to equality and accountability, restore the individual agency engendered by the three dimensions of freedom”.

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Benedict Cumberbatch to play Satan in Neil Gaiman fantasy series Good Omens

Sherlock star will voice a ‘giant animated Satan’ in the drama, which will also feature David Tennant, Michael Sheen and Frances McDormand

Benedict Cumberbatch is set to follow up his role as Brexit architect Dominic Cummings by playing another famously contentious figure. The Sherlock star will appear as Satan in Good Omens, Amazon and the BBC’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s fantasy novel, which is due to air in May.

Related: Is Good Omens one of the best collaborative novels ever written?

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Archive shows medieval nun faked her own death to escape convent

Archbishop’s register reveals how Joan of Leeds crafted a dummy of her body that was buried, while she pursued ‘the way of carnal lust’

A team of medieval historians working in the archives at the University of York has found evidence that a nun in the 14th century faked her own death and crafted a dummy “in the likeness of her body” in order to escape her convent and pursue – in the words of the archbishop of the time – “the way of carnal lust”.

A marginal note written in Latin and buried deep within one of the 16 heavy registers used by to record the business of the archbishops of York between 1304 and 1405 first alerted archivists to the adventures of the runaway nun. “To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house,” runs the note written by archbishop William Melton and dated to 1318.

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Brush with genius: the hidden talent of Orson Welles

New book about cinema great reveals the sketches behind some of his most ambitious works

Orson Welles’s formidable talents as an actor, director, producer and writer are well known through classic movies such as Citizen Kane and The Third Man. But more than three decades after his death, Welles’s flair for draughtsmanship is now increasingly being recognised.

Sketches of film and stage productions are among hundreds of drawings reproduced in a forthcoming book, which follows a documentary about his art and an exhibition in Edinburgh last summer.

Related: Lights, canvas, action: paintings and drawings by Orson Welles

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Unseen Robert A Heinlein novel reworks 'awful' The Number of the Beast

Publisher says book, reconstructed from the author’s papers, is much closer to his traditional work than the much derided 1980 space romp

An unpublished book by Robert A Heinlein, which provides a completely new ending to the author’s controversial novel The Number of the Beast, has been reconstructed from notes and typed manuscript pages left behind by the Hugo award-winning author.

Heinlein was a major figure in 20th-century science fiction, the author of works including Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. According to publisher Phoenix Pick, which worked with the Heinlein Prize Trust to reconstruct the text, Heinlein wrote it as an alternate version of 1980’s The Number of the Beast. One of his later works, that novel was described in a blurb as following the adventures of “four supremely sensual and unspeakably cerebral humans – two male, two female”, who “find themselves under attack from aliens who want their awesome quantum breakthrough”. Its critical reception was not warm. “An embarrassment; it is unremittingly awful,” according to Dave Langford in 1981, who highlighted Heinlein’s treatment of sex and “every character’s gross and grotesque obsession with breasts”, while a School Library Journal write-up called it “a catalogue of Heinlein’s sins as an author; it is sophomoric, sexist, militantly rightwing and excessively verbose”.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2BqUKz0

Unseen Robert A Heinlein novel reworks 'awful' The Number of the Beast

Publisher says book, reconstructed from the author’s papers, is much closer to his traditional work than the much derided 1980 space romp

An unpublished book by Robert A Heinlein, which provides a completely new ending to the author’s controversial novel The Number of the Beast, has been reconstructed from notes and typed manuscript pages left behind by the Hugo award-winning author.

Heinlein was a major figure in 20th-century science fiction, the author of works including Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. According to publisher Phoenix Pick, which worked with the Heinlein Prize Trust to reconstruct the text, Heinlein wrote it as an alternate version of 1980’s The Number of the Beast. One of his later works, that novel was described in a blurb as following the adventures of “four supremely sensual and unspeakably cerebral humans – two male, two female”, who “find themselves under attack from aliens who want their awesome quantum breakthrough”. Its critical reception was not warm. “An embarrassment; it is unremittingly awful,” according to Dave Langford in 1981, who highlighted Heinlein’s treatment of sex and “every character’s gross and grotesque obsession with breasts”, while a School Library Journal write-up called it “a catalogue of Heinlein’s sins as an author; it is sophomoric, sexist, militantly rightwing and excessively verbose”.

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King of kitchen sink - Albert Finney: a life in pictures

The celebrated actor, who personified the new wave of British cinema in the early 60s, has died. Here we look back at his career highlights

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Albert Finney, cinema's original 'angry young man', dies aged 82

Celebrated actor who rose to fame in the ‘kitchen sink’ era before evolving into one of the screen greats of the postwar period, has died

• Albert Finney – a life in pictures

Albert Finney, who forged his reputation as one of the leading actors of Britain’s early 60s new wave cinema, has died aged 82 after a short illness, his family have announced. In 2011, he disclosed he had been suffering from kidney cancer. Having shot to fame as the star of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Finney received five Oscar nominations, but never won, and refused a knighthood.

Born in Salford in 1936, Finney grew up the son of a bookmaker as part of what he called the “lower middle class”. Encouraged by his headmaster at Salford Grammar school, Finney got a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he found himself in the same class as Peter O’Toole and Alan Bates. Having established himself as a theatre actor, Finney capitalised on the late-50s surge of interest in “northern” material, and found himself cast, first, in a small role in the film adaptation of John Osborne’s The Entertainer (set in Morecambe) and then as the lead in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, as rambunctious factory worker Arthur Seaton.

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The best recent science fiction and fantasy – review roundup

Golden State by Ben H Winters; Foe by Iain Reid; The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon; The Chosen from the First Age anthology and The Revenant Express by George Mann

In Golden State (Century, £14.99), Ben H Winters posits a dystopian future California where the notion of truth is all important; anyone caught lying faces a lengthy jail sentence or exile. Citizens document their daily lives, state surveillance is ever present and recreational fictions have ceased to exist: instead people watch documentary TV. Laszlo Ratesic is a jaded fiftysomething with a talent for sniffing out lies in his role as a law enforcement agent with the Speculative Service. When he is called on to investigate after a worker falls from a roof, it looks like a simple case of accidental death – but Laszlo soon finds himself involved in a complex plot where the truth proves to be a slippery concept. He’s compelled to question everything he’s taken for granted, including the very idea of objective reality. In Golden State, Winters has fashioned a wry commentary on our current era of fake news.

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via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2IdqDB9

Second AJ Finn novel on way despite Dan Mallory scandal, says publisher

Revelations that the author of The Woman in the Window lied repeatedly about having cancer have not dissuaded HarperCollins from publishing a followup

Dan Mallory’s publisher HarperCollins has said that it intends publish a second novel by him, despite revelations that he had lied about having cancer.

Mallory, who wrote the bestselling thriller The Woman in the Window under the pseudonym AJ Finn, admitted in a statement this week in response to an extensive New Yorker investigation that “on numerous occasions in the past, I have stated, implied, or allowed others to believe that I was afflicted with a physical malady instead of a psychological one: cancer, specifically”.

Related: The talented Dan Mallory affair: is this high noon for the privileged white male? | Jonathan Freedland

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Jill Abramson accused of plagiarism in new book Merchants of Truth

Ex-New York Times editor disputed allegations after Vice reporter listed passages that resemble material from other publications

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is facing allegations that she lifted material from other sources for her new book, Merchants of Truth.

Related: Merchants of Truth by Jill Abramson review – journalism’s troubles

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George Orwell: British Council apologises for rejecting food essay

The author was commissioned to write about British food for an overseas audience in 1946, but piece was spiked amid anxiety about postwar austerity

More than 70 years after the event, the British Council has apologised to George Orwell for commissioning and then rejecting an essay about British food.

The author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm was, the body has revealed, commissioned to write British Cookery in 1946, as part of the organisation’s efforts to promote British culture overseas. But a discovery in the British Council’s archives has revealed that after commissioning the essay, it declined to publish it, telling Orwell that it was problematic to write about food in a time of strict rationing.

Related: George Orwell said the world’s bureaucrats couldn’t take spring from us, but they are | Jeff Sparrow

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Rosamunde Pilcher, author of The Shell Seekers, dies aged 94

The British author, who produced numerous bestsellers after her 1987 breakthrough, died after having a stroke

Rosamunde Pilcher, author of the sweeping, bestselling family saga The Shell Seekers, has died at the age of 94.

Her son, author Robin Pilcher, confirmed the news to the Guardian on Thursday. “She had been in great form up until Christmas, then suffered from bronchitis in the new year, but was always expected to bounce back as before. However, she suffered a stroke on Sunday night and never regained consciousness,” said Robin.

Related: The Rosamunde Pilcher trail: why German tourists flock to Cornwall

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Stella prize 2019: Gail Jones, Bri Lee and Chloe Hooper make 'thrilling' longlist

List also includes Fiona Wright’s The World Was Whole, Jenny Ackland’s Little Gods and Enza Gandolfo’s The Bridge

“Women’s writing swaggers into the limelight again,” said the judging panel chair, Louise Swinn, in announcing the 12 longlisted books for this year’s Stella prize.

This year’s longlist includes Bri Lee’s debut work of non-fiction, Eggshell Skull; literary stalwart and acclaimed novelist Gail Jones’s “novel of ideas”, The Death of Noah Glass; Chloe Hooper’s investigation into Black Saturday, The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire; and Fiona Wright’s most recent collection of essays, The World Was Whole.

Related: Graeme Simsion, Jane Caro, Ginger Gorman and more on what they're reading in February

Related: 'A real loss': MUP and the 'terrible' decision that rocked Australian publishing

Little Gods by Jenny Ackland (Allen & Unwin)

Man Out of Time by Stephanie Bishop (Hachette Australia)

Bluebottle by Belinda Castles (Allen & Unwin)

The Bridge by Enza Gandolfo (Scribe)

The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper (Penguin Random House)

The Death of Noah Glass by Gail Jones (Text)

Pink Mountain on Locust Island by Jamie Marina Lau (Brow Books)

The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie (Finch)

Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin)

Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (UQP)

Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin (Brow Books)

The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright (Giramondo)

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Stieg Larsson's investigation of Swedish PM's assassination revealed in new book

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s author was also a campaigning journalist and amassed a huge archive researching the 1986 murder of Olof Palme

Unseen research by the late Stieg Larsson into the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is set to be revealed in a new true crime book.

Larsson is most famous for his bestselling Millennium series of thrillers that explored the dark underbelly of Swedish society and politics. A journalist for his much of his life, he died suddenly in 2004, just months after selling his first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He left behind completed manuscripts for the two sequels, which have together sold 80m copies around the world.

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Bestselling author of The Woman at the Window 'lied about having cancer'

Investigation by the New Yorker finds that Dan Mallory, who writes as AJ Finn, repeatedly fabricated serious illness

Dan Mallory, author of the bestselling thriller The Woman in the Window under the pseudonym AJ Finn, has admitted to lying about having brain cancer for years, after a lengthy New Yorker profile accused him of a long history of falsehoods around his professional history and health.

Mallory made headlines in 2016 when his identity as a book editor was revealed during a heated auction for his debut novel, The Woman in the Window. A film version of the thriller, about a woman with agoraphobia who begins spying on her new neighbours, is due out later this year, scripted by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts and starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman.

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Wellcome book prize: gender and identity dominate 2019 longlist

Books in contention range from a transgender man’s boxing story to a memoir of recovering from psychosis and a novel about narcotic hibernation

Thomas Page McBee’s memoir about being the first transgender man to box at Madison Square Garden, Amateur, and Tara Westover’s account of her survivalist upbringing preparing for the End of Days, Educated, are both competing for the £30,000 Wellcome book prize.

Related: ‘I started dry retching’: the harrowing world of a trauma cleaner

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British Library's collection of obscene writing goes online

‘Private Case’ of sexually explicit books dating back to 1658 ranges from the hijinks of Roger Pheuquewell to pioneering gay porn in the 19th century

The sniggeringly pseudonymous Roger Pheuquewell’s contribution to a series of 18th-century erotic novels imagining the female body as land needing to be “ploughed” is among a collection of books from the British Library’s “Private Case” – a collection of obscene titles kept locked away for more than a century that are finally being shared with a wider audience.

First published in the 1740s, the Merryland books were written by different authors, all describing the female anatomy metaphorically as land ripe for exploration. Thomas Stretzer, who died in 1738, was the then-anonymous author of A New Description of Merryland, credited in a 1741 edition to one Roger Pheuquewell. In it, the author describes his “instrument” as “of a large radius … inferior to none”, writing of how “to say truth, the nature of the Soyl is very strange, so that if a man do but take a piece of it in his hand, twill cause (as it were) an immediate Delirium, and make a man fall flat upon his face upon the ground, where if he have not a care, he may chance to lose a limb, swallowed up in a whirl-pit”.

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'An insult': French writers outraged by festival's use of 'sub-English' words

Prominent writers including Leila Slimani have spoken out against the Salon du Livre in Paris’s use of phrases including ‘young adult’, a ‘bookquizz’ and ‘le live’

A celebration of the “Scène Young Adult” at the Salon du Livre in Paris next month has drawn the condemnation of dozens of French authors and intellectuals, who have described the adoption of English terminology as an “unbearable act of cultural delinquency”.

The proliferation of English words on display at the book fair, where the “scène YA” was set to feature “Le Live”, a “Bookroom”, a “photobooth” and a “bookquizz”, spurred around 100 French writers into action, among them three winners of the country’s Goncourt prize – Lullaby author Leïla Slimani, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Marie NDiaye – and the bestselling writers Muriel Barbery and Catherine Millet. Together they have issued a scalding rebuke to organisers over their use of that “sub-English known as globish”.

Related: Pas de 'fake news' – too many English words rile French defenders

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Director Emma Rice to take over role in Wise Children

Former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe steps into limelight in her touring production of the Angela Carter adaptation

The theatre director Emma Rice is to take over one of the lead roles in Wise Children, her adaptation of Angela Carter’s 1991 novel.

The touring production – Rice’s first for her new company, which is also named Wise Children – has its final dates at Richmond theatre in late March and Coventry’s Belgrade theatre in early April. For those performances, Rice will step into the role of Nora Chance. Etta Murfitt has played the part since the play premiered at the Old Vic in London in October last year.

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'Tell your truth,' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie urges Colombia festivalgoers

Novelist addresses two packed events at the Latin American Hay festival, where she says black women writers must resist pressure ‘not to be black’

Feminists need to get their sons to make their own beds and not to clap when they do, the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie told a packed audience at the Hay Cartagena festival on Saturday.

“There’s almost an epidemic of guilt among women,” she said. “They feel guilty for wanting more and guilty for not doing domestic work when all over the world they do most of it. One of the ways we have to think about it is how we raise boys, because they should be taught to do their share.”

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Neil Gaiman webchat – post your questions now

Neil Gaiman webchat – post your questions now

Andrew McGahan, Queensland author of Praise and The White Earth, dies aged 52

Miles Franklin award-winning writer of 10 novels has died of pancreatic cancer

Miles Franklin-winning Queensland author Andrew McGahan, the author of 10 novels including Praise, Last Drinks, The White Earth and the Ship Kings series, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 52.

McGahan broke into the industry in 1992 with Praise, a raw, comic and semi-autobiographical novel that captured the essence of Brisbane as it emerged from the Bjelke-Petersen era.

Related: Andrew McGahan captured the repressed rage of 1980s Brisbane perfectly | Andrew Stafford

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JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

Exclusive: The Catcher in the Rye author’s son tells the Guardian estate will publish ‘all of what he wrote’ over next decade

• Matt Salinger: ‘My father was writing for 50 years without publishing. That’s a lot of material’

JD Salinger’s son has confirmed for the first time that the late author of The Catcher in the Rye wrote a significant amount of work that has never been seen, and that he and his father’s widow are “going as fast as we freaking can” to get it ready for publication.

Salinger died in 2010, leaving behind a small but perfectly formed body of published work that has not been added to since 1965’s New Yorker story, Hapworth 16, 1924. Rumours have circulated for years that the creator of one of the 20th century’s most enduring characters, Holden Caulfield, continued to write over the ensuing decades he spent in the New Hampshire village of Cornish, far from public view.

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Young adult author cancels own novel after race controversy

Advance copies of Amélie Wen Zhao’s Blood Heir were criticised for its depiction of slavery, for which the author apologised and pulled publication

An up-and-coming young adult author has cancelled the publication of her highly anticipated debut novel, following a flood of online criticism from readers over her depiction of race and slavery.

Amélie Wen Zhao’s novel, Blood Heir, was sold to publishers for a high six-figure sum last January. A fantastical retelling of the Anastasia story involving “a princess hiding a dark secret and the conman she must trust to clear her name for her father’s murder”, it was scheduled to be published in June.

Related: Vetting for stereotypes: meet publishing's 'sensitivity readers'

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The Tattooist of Auschwitz sequel prompts concern from camp memorial

Memorial says it found the story of Cilka, partly told in Heather Morris’s original novel and set to be continued in Cilka’s Journey, ‘highly questionable’

The Auschwitz Memorial has voiced concern after Heather Morris announced a sequel to her bestselling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which will use the real life of a woman sent to the concentration camp as a child as “inspiration”.

A hit book around the world, The Tattooist of Auschwitz tells the story of the Slovakian Jew Lali Sokolov, and how he fell in love with a woman he tattooed at the camp. Sokolov, who died in 2006, told Morris his story, which she turned it into the novel that has now sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK alone.

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